The Treasure Keeper
by frankiebabe29
Summary: the life and death of Neville Longbottom based on a T.S.Eillot line. One-shot, preHBP, NevilleLuna/ NevilleHannah, RonHermione, HarryGinny


**this made mu sister cry so I decided it might be okay. The T.S. Eillot quote is from hi poem 'the Hollow men" which is beautiful. I've been perfecting this off and on for three years so reviews are begged for.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
**

**The Treasure Keeper**

T.S. Elliot once said "This is how the World Ends, not with a Bang, but with a Whimper."

Neville Longbottom dies rather slowly and quietly with his daughter holding his hand. Inside his head he is back in a place where she doesn't even exist yet and it is only later when he enters a grave that's been waiting for him for 66 years that she realises, in some ways he never really left.

-

When he looks back across seventy years, he doesn't know when it begins. He is never able to pinpoint the exact place. But the closest he ever gets perhaps, is now, this moment here.

It is three days after his sixteenth birthday, on his desk sit five cards. Beside the cards are a stack of letters with varying hand-writing.

_.Harry. Luna. Ron. Hermione. Ginny._

The names ring around in his head and make his stomach buzz excitedly. Maybe there are just some things you can't go through without becoming close.

He's never really had friends before.

-

His grand-mother surveys him with an odd expression.

"Neville," she says bluntly "by doing what you did, you've made a target of yourself for the Dark Lord. Your not be safe here, not now. There is an organisation devoted to fighting him. They have offered you safe housing over the summer. I believe Harry Potter and his friends are also staying there.

So this is it? He cannot even live in his own home anymore? Despite everything, he doesn't regret his decision.

-

Ron grins when he arrives and tells him he'll be staying with him, and Harry who's also on the way from his relatives. Ginny and Hermione both hug him and say that Luna will be there in half and hour.

Without realising it he is smiling when he takes his trunk up to their room.

-

In some ways it is almost like living in the Hogwarts dormitory. He still listens to Ron heavy snores all night. Still wakes and watches when Harry rises in the night; to pace or stare out the window at distant stars.

Buts suddenly he's included in all of the jokes; the plots and secret discussions that he used to watch with such longing.

It is strange because they are not quite what he thought they were –when he was on the outside looking in and they were all so wondrous, so godlike. He sees them for what they are now, more human, more flawed.

And he is glad of it, realises people are always only images and ideals until you break certain barriers and perceptions. That the fact that they are mere motals too only makes them more amazing.

He watches Luna twirling her wand around her fingers and suddenly decides to start collecting butter-beer corks.

-

It's three months after they return to Hogwarts that he gets up the first time to join Harry by the windowsill. His friend looks at him, eyes a muddle of emerald fear and hope and confusion.

He looks so small, like a child, which he is and yet in so amny ways is not.

Neville sits with him, wordlessly. They don't saying anything that night. Talking, that comes later.

-

Harry tells him in March, his voice soft and uneven as he speaks the words Neville knows he's never told anyone before.

"We have the same birthday, it could've been either of us, couldn't it?" he asks after a time.

Harry takes a breath, "but it's me."

Neville doesn't know what to tell him. They fall into an uncomfortable silence and he can see Harry realising with some inner dilemma.

He waits, calm as he can make himself until Harry asks suddenly, "Would you hate me if I told you, that-That sometime I wish it was you?"

Neville looks at him "That depends" He replies evenly, "do hate me because I'm glad it's not?"

-

He has forty six butter beer caps in his trunk in the dormitory.

Luna's tucked her hair behind her ear four times in the last ten minuets.

He's been his stomach been strange around her for the last twenty-nine days.

There's a Hogsmead weekend in a week. He's tried to ask her seven times and failed.

"Hey...um... Luna?"

-

Four days before the end of 6th year and his trunk still isn't packed. He hasn't forgotten, he's not lazy. He's just trying not to think the thing that's been plaguing him for nearly a month now.

Ron and Harry come into the dormitory, belongs they've been collecting from the Commonroom clasped in their hands. They approach Neville slowly, as he stares blankly at his headboard.

"Where am I going this summer?" he asks quietly

They look at him in confusion, not knowing why the question is even asked. "Your coming to HQ of course, where did you think you were going?"

-

He feels warm inside as he walks into Grimmauld Place, despite how gloomy it is.

Molly Weasely hugs him as he arrives, asking if he liked the jumper she sent him for Christmas. Professor Lupin and Tonks call their greetings from the kitchen.

He smiles. Perhaps it is possible to have more than one home.

-

7th year seems to pass in a blur of magic and sound and colour. He kisses Luna by the lake at the beginning of spring and conjures Patroni with the memory.

He achieves the highest marks in herbology and draws at lest equal with Ron in all his other subjects. Though Harry beats her at Defense and Luna triumphs over her previous year's marks in Charms, Hermione still maintains her place as the best in the group, the only one of them with even the slightest flare for history and potions.

She's been smiling more lately and he's caught Ron holding her hand a few times.

Ginny and Harry get fined 20 points for very public displays of affection on the Quditch pitch right after they win the cup. Neville is amused when Harry tells him a few nights later that this was the first time he ever kissed her.

He is there once more when the dark lord strikes. In the thick of it, in all the horror and terror when the world refracts into spells and blood; dying and staying alive.

There in the long hours afterwards to wait, wet-eyed and wondering with the other four to see if Harry will ever wake up again.

He is there when Harry does wakes up and they play down the fear-tell him teasingly never to do stupid things again. Pretend that they weren't so close….

Neville knows the truth, that this is only one fight in many, that they may not be lucky forever. Probably won't. That he's chosen a path that may lead him to death or disaster or madness.

He still doesn't regret it.

-

They leave school and everything seems to shift around them, gets bigger and darker and stranger.

They still live together in Grimmauld Place because really they have no where else to go. It's consistency in a world of risk and chance. They need that now, and each other.

They plan a war together with themselves as pieces on the front line. They work and study and go on missions for the order. Try not to get killed by a madman.

Between it all they squabble and joke and make all the daft mistakes they always have. They fall in love.

Harry proposes to Ginny, the Christmas they turn nineteen in the snow and the holiday cheer. A wedding is added to the mix.

-

They get married on the 23rd of April. Neville's never really seen Ginny look so beautiful or Harry look so happy.

It's a day of enjoyment, of peace. They dance and cut cake and drink Champaign. Hannah Abbot catches the bouquet and he smiles congratulations at her with his arm around Luna.

That night they lie in bed together for hours taking about houses and children and futures and lives they both know they might never have.

-

The war gets fiercer as the year passes and they see each other less and less between meeting and missions and assignments.

They cling to what time they do have together, stretch the moments out afraid to lose each other amongst it all.

And this isn't what Neville thought his would be. Back when he'd been young and looking out to the future and everything had seemed so easy and simple. He sees it clearer now, sees all the flaws and things he'd missed before.

And he is glad of it, realises that the bad things only make the good so much more poniant and that imperfect things can be wondrous too.

And then it's Halloween, when their twenty and just barely adult, that the Dark Lord moves on Hogwarts.

-

Neville has forty-six minor injures on his body.

Four out of every ten people died in the final battle.

29 that were close friends or year mates or people with whom he worked.

It takes a week to bury all the bodies. He's tried seven times to count how many there are and failed.

Ron, Mione, Ginny, Harry and Luna are dead.

Neville doesn't know what to do with his hands.

-

He meets Hannah Abbot, who caught Ginny's bouquet, at the cemetery the following year. It's the first anniversary and the place is filled with a silent, sorrowful crowd.

Hannah is crying a little at the foot of Susan and Justin Fintch-Fletchly's graves and he feels a little less alone in the world because apparently not everyone's forgotten

"Hey Hannah, it's been a long time."

-

They date for three years. Neville doesn't get that bubbling joy he felt around Luna or the intense passion he felt kissing her. He tells himself that war heightens all emotions; that nothing is quite real in it. After all when you live in the shadow of death everything seems so much deeper and stronger and more important.

He isn't in love with Hannah but he dose love her very much and otherwise all he has is an empty grave waiting for him to fill it.

-

He marries Hannah on the 16 of February 2005

It's a day of enjoyment. People dance and eat and drink Champaign and Ginny, Fred's four year old daughter catches the bouquet. Grins with her bright Weasley features and shows it off all night.

He tries not to think how it feels to have Ernie McMillen as his best man, to be saying these words to Hannah. He tries not to think about a night of wistful words and unrealised dreams. About four friends and a lover gone five years.

He is here and this is now and he really does have to stop living in the past.

-

It is May when Hannah tells him, a nervous smile playing across her features, that she is a month gone. Numbly puts a hand on her stomach which holds a child too small to even be see yet.

By the end of July they've moved into a house in Hogsmead. It is small and old, the walls dusty and the décor dower.

Hannah hates it because she thinks it too gloomy but Neville convinces her that it is close to Hogwarts for the baby and well placed in the magical village. He doesn't mention the other gloomy house, that he loves the place because it reminds him so much of home.

-

He sits up long hours, dreaming what his child will look like and how they will act.

Hannah and he discuss which features they hope it will get, which they do not. Agree to Hannah's chestnut looks and Neville's dark eyes.

Only sometimes, late at night, when his wife is asleep, he has other, guiltier fantasies. His mind drifting over white hair and blue eyes which is silly and stupid and painful.

--

His daughter is born in ward 46 in Saint Mungo's.

It is 4 minuets to 10 at night on the 29 of April.

It is a week before they are allowed to take her home. They try seven different names and fail to use any of them.

At last Alice Susan Longbottom looks out at the world through brown eyes that are infinitely Hannah's.

He adores her anyway.

-

Little Alice is curled on his lap in an old, worn armchair by the hath. The fire light dances off her muddy blond hair and her fingers have curled themselves around the sleeve of his shirt

He smoothes the surface of a photograph, fingers tracing out the memoires. Marvelling that it is still glossy despite all the years.

"And that's Harry there-this is actually one of the few pictures were he'll stay in view, and beside him is Ginny of course. This is about three weeks before they got married-"

"You were there weren't you daddy?" Alice asks excitedly.

"Yes. I was one of the Best Men remember? And that's Hermione and Ron, they were always arguing you know. And I'm back here."

Alice follows moving finger, her small face frowning over an unacknowledged figure. "And who's that daddy?"

Neville feels a small lump in his throat and swallows, slowly. "That's Luna. You remember I told you about Luna."

Alice nods. "She's pretty."

From the shadow of the door way he can feel Hannah watching them.

"Yes she is pretty." Neville agrees softly. "Very pretty."

-

Hannah looks at him almost accusingly through the darkness.

"It's been twelve years!" She hisses. "You have a wife now and a daughter. You need to move on Neville! You need to let the dead be dead!"

He sighes, because by now this is an old argument between them. "You don't understand. You weren't-"

Hannah cuts him off, her voice low and furious. "Don't you dare tell me I wasn't there! I lost my best friends too remember?! Everybody lost people close to them, but other people moved on with their lives! Why can't you?"

He rolls away from her in the bed. He doesn't know what to tell her. Because she's right, she so very right about this and she's only saying what Neville has been telling himself for years.

And yet…she doesn't understand either, not really. Justin and Susan had died too perhaps.

But it was different. He knew this in some inexpressible, yet intensely important way.

It was so very different.

-

The house is quite during the months Alice is at school.

Over the years they've found a nicish, they've settled. Moving in a series of routines that are safe and structure and easy.

Sometimes they go days at a time with barely a word between them.

He grows carrots in his garden and reads the Quibbler most mornings. Hannah is almost spiteful towards his collection of Butterbeer caps and the way he still rises some nights to sit by the window.

He doesn't blame her.

-

It is during the Christmas she is home from her third year that he first notices the anger in Alice's eyes when she looks at her mother.

She's is getting older after all and Hannah's frequent trips to 'Uncle Ernie's were hardly going to go unnoticed forever. He watches their interactions- the restraint of Alice and Hannah's unacknowledgement of the change. He watches his daughter slowly start to shut her mother out.

No doubt she is fully of righteous rage on his part- probable thinks he doesn't know. Neville feels guilty, so guilty because if she should hate anyone for they way they are, it's him. But Alice is only a child and she can only see this still in simple terms. Any explanation he could give, she would not understand. Not really.

His daughter has never lived under the shadow of a monster but Neville has and he feels tired and hollow and old.

-

When she's sixteen, Alice brings home Jason Weasley.

He can tell immediately that she's in love with him, quite deeply, and that the boy feels the same way.

He smiles over their giddiness, and sadly disposes his theory about war and emotions.

Hannah is tight lipped and coolly polite. He is angry at her for it, even though he knows it's his fault she doesn't like the Weasleys. Alice returns her chill with more chill and their house is icy and he thinks glumly that he seems to turn everyone against each other these days.

Jason stays up with him one night and he tells him about the aunt and uncle he never knew. He is impressed and saddened by the boy that looks like Ron and speaks like Ginny.

Alice hugs him when it's time for them to return to school and whispers a soft, soulful thank-you in his ear.

Hannah is at Ernie's for four days after they leave. He starts to think she's not coming back.

-

Alice marries Jason on the 23rd of April 2029.

Nevell laughs and weeps and smiles. Doesn't have the heart to tell them of the other wedding they share the date with and from the looks on the rest of the Weasley clan's faces they don't either.

The service is beautiful, from the soft smiles of Alice to the devoted gaze of Jason.

When he claps he can almost feel the others, standing beside him, can almost see them in the haziness of the moment and he feels whole in a way he hasn't in years.

Then it passes and he's alone again. Standing with a nervous Hannah in the Weasely's back yard.

-

The world turns, speeding them all too soon into the future. Hannah and Alice are still barely talking and their marriage has been a false one so long he doesn't know quiet know why they stay together.

They never do get divorced, and he'd like to think that's because deep down they still love each other and they do, only their not in love and never have been.

Then suddenly he is 60 and has grand children and retires and his joints ache in bad weather. He doesn't quiet know where the time went.

He thinks perhaps, one only gets a certain amount of intensity and he used it all up in the space of six years and has only been coasting ever since.

Sometimes the house is so quiet he thinks they're dead.

-

They're dead and they have been over forty years now.

Neville still comes back every spring, faithfully, though he's among the last to do so. He scrapes the moss from the marble headstones and plants violets and crocuses in the new earth.

It is in these quite moments he wonders, as he always has, when life began and what would have happened if it had gone on. Why he can't let go like everyone else seems to have.

He tries to judge which is cruller, to die so young and full of fire and passion like they did, or to grow old like he has. To watch everything you ever were fall away from you.

He's started misplacing time in his head. And people. He doesn't always know when now is, only that it's all hazy and forgetful.

His youngest granddaughter's name is Luna and Hannah and Alice haven't spoken in a year now. He hopes that changes soon. Their going to need each other before this is over.

-

This is a hospital, he knows that only sometimes.

There's a pretty girl that comes in and holds his hand and cries softly sometimes and he wants to call her Luna only she's dead isn't she? He swears he saw her only yesterday. He tries the name Hannah but that isn't quiet right either.

Then at times it all clicks into place and it's Alice, sitting there with red-rimed eyes and he hates knowing he'll wake up tomorrow and forget her again.

"Daddy." She says it softly, like a little girl. "_Daddy_."

-

Neville plays chess with Ron in the hospital wing and Ron isn't nearly as good as he remembers

-

He's weak he knows that. Not because he is dying, not because he lives with a name that is not his wife's on his lips.

"You were in love with her, weren't you daddy." Alice asks him one afternoon, in a voice that tells him she already knows the answer. "You still are. You were in love with Luna."

"Yes." He doesn't lie and spare her feelings, because she isn't a child now and she deserves the truth whether she understands it or not. "And no."

He's in love with a place, with a time and its people. He's in love with ghosts and memories that he can't let go of.

He can't move on because deep down he doesn't really want to.

And it makes him weak and he's always been weak. Will admit freely it was Hannah who was the strong one. The one who suffered injustice even though everyone thinks it was him.

He recognises suddenly how childish he's been, romanticising the war in his head when the war changed nothing and caused nothing but pain and horror and sorrow. Sees it's his own fault that he wasted all his life stuck in the past and clinging to things that were gone.

And he thinks he should feel terrible, feel some deep desire to go back and change it all, but the truth is he doesn't really mind.

He's lived his life, perhaps not the right way but the best way he knew how too.

That is enough here, in this strange place where everything is reduced to numbers and symbols. Everything that was and is and might have been.

It doesn't matter. He could regret nothing or everything and it still wouldn't make a difference .

There would still be five graves that are about to become six.

-

He hold a hand that might be Luna's, he isn't sure and hopes that they'll survive this war

-

And for Neville Longbottom this is how the world ends. Not with a Bang but a Whimper.

-

**Fin**

**Well I hope you liked it!! pretty please review!!!  
**


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